It is a standard stratagem deployed by regimes like an SOP – when a movement seems spinning out of its control, tactics and capacity to torpedo, it starts introducing a lot of white noise into it. White Noise is a concept very familiar to students of mass communication theories and basically denotes a strategy of drowning the message in meaningless chatter designed to obliterate the core information. In conversation with sociologist Prof Manjit Singh and civil liberties activist and practising lawyer Rajiv Godara, WSN showcases DALEEL with SP Singh.

SOMETHING similar has been happening on the sidelines of the farmers’ agitation against the three farm legislations rammed in by the Modi government. A small group of farmers going wayward, the ugly scenes at the Red Fort, the prime minister, in his Mann Ki Baat making too much out of some perceived insult to the national flag, and the arrests of many youth -all these are time tested tactics to turn the conversation elsewhere.

In this debate, we dig our heels in, refusing to stray along tangents. With Prof Manjit Singh, a sociologist by vocation and training and a public intellectual with years in activism, and Rajiv Godara, a practising advocate by vocation and with a long association with civil liberties struggle and grassroots activism, this is a conversation that addresses the core issues and tries to peep into the future.

Punjab needs a new politics, and so does India. What will that be? And how will a Punjab, that has had the experience of a people’s movement, search for it, or shape it?